The Horse Power Of The Internet: The Newsgroups
Sit back get a cup of coffee it's time for another tale of technology
by Jimmy Freligh Jr | June 5th, 2004
The central backbone of the Internet many people don’t realize are the Newsgroups. Newsgroups come in many different colors, shapes and sizes. A lot people don’t realize that most of the software, music, movies all come from the Newsgroups first. People on IRC and other different types of P2P programs all that data really comes from the Newsgroups. Like it or not that is just the way it is and has been. Picture the Newsgroups as a collection of networks a worldwide network that almost everybody has access to uploading and sharing information and answering people’s questions. A giant bulletin board where you can read/write/download/upload etc etc. Many people never heard of the Newsgroups because it is old dark way of getting information it is as underground as underground gets it is an untouched network, no laws and no rules. It is probably the biggest public file server available on the Internet and the most complex. When I say file server this file server is called USENET and the folders on it are called Newsgroups inside the Newsgroups are articles, these articles being files/text. Picture Newsgroups as a series of folders sitting on a giant file server that server called USENET. Picture yourself posting a text file on the Newsgroups with a question well chances are tomorrow you got about 10,000 reply’s on how to fix your problem and answering your every need plus more. Some people don’t like the Newsgroups at first because it is not exactly Kazaa. You can now search through stuff but, you can’t just get exactly what you want. You need to wait and/or ask the posters nicely for certain piece’s of information/whatever your looking for. It is not user friendly at all but, that is why advanced users love the Newsgroups you don’t get your average typical crowd. You don’t get your average typical viruses/trojans you don’t get garbage most of the time but, sometimes you do. Nobody really runs the Newsgroups, people make it stay alive by uploading information. Not all things have to be from the black market a lot of things are very useful piece’s of information not all of the Newsgroups are junk. To an average user a lot of it seems to be junk but, when you putting the pieces together you don’t get junk.
Newsgroups are for the more advanced users because of the tools needed to read/write/download/upload. There are a ton of Newsgroups readers out there I am really not going to get into that, you can always visit fiberops.net for all the tools that I use.
There are free Newsgroups normally there the ones your ISP gives you. There’s about 70,000 of them. There is also paid subscriptions for people who don’t get Newsgroup access from there ISP. The paid subscription services are Giganews and Easynews the most common. For example why the Newsgroups are so powerful imagine uploading a 500MB file to a Newsgroup, lets use this as an example only. Your uploading a 500MB file to a certain Newsgroup once it is done someone sitting on the other side of the world see’s your file on that certain Newsgroup. Your ISP already FXP’ed the file worldwide to USENET. He/she goes to download this file but, it is directly downloading from he/she ISP getting the most bandwidth he/she can possibly get. This is why the Newsgroups are so big is the speed when you upload a file your not uploading this file across country your uploading directly to your ISP same goes for downloading, your downloading directly from your ISP not somewhere else. With all the different unique things on the Newsgroups why aren’t they illegal because it is one of the oldest ways of the Internet it was here before the Internet and will be here forever.
"For every Patch, there is a Hole"
June 2004, Jimmy Freligh Jr
Jimmy Freligh Jr
Chief Information Officer (CIO) @ FiberOps | Winnetka City Councilman
Network Manager @ Lincoln Systems Inc. | Canoga Park City Councilman
